Three Interesting Observations
In my last couple of days in Beijing, I’ve come across three very interesting observations while traveling across the city to do interviews for our PAE.
- Last Sunday, I got into a Beijing taxi to go eat Peking Duck. The driver of the taxi was playing some interesting music: Jordan Sparks - No Air, Chris Brown - With You, Rihanna - Disturbia. I asked the driver if he understood anything that they were singing, and he said no. So I asked him why he was listening to it, and he replied, because I like the beat. Then I told him that we listen to Jay Chou a lot in America.
- I’ve been going around town with my PAE partner and our Beijing Normal University student/guide, Yu Yi, who are both female. Even though we go everywhere as a group of three, I’ve had at least four different people ask me, and only me, for directions around Beijing. Of course, I have no idea how to get anywhere. But what’s ironic is that they would ask me, the only guy in our group, rather than my two friends. Yu Yi thinks I somehow look more like a Beijing local. I wonder if that’s a compliment.
- It’s been very difficult to use Chinese during our interviews, especially because I don’t know how to say any of the public policy lingo in Chinese. But, what I’ve found is that this typically hasn’t been a huge problem, because much of the public policy lingo doesn’t have Chinese equivalent expressions yet. Words such as NGO do not have a Chinese equivalent because a direct translation suggests that government is not necessary. I’ve also found, in many of the organizations we’ve come across, including Mercy Corps, China Social Entrepreneur Foundation, and Bright China Group, that their leaders have all been educated outside the U.S. So during the interviews, my Chin-glish has often come out in full form, and the interviewee fully understands my trans-pacific tongue. It also makes me wonder, does it take the experience of living in a foreign country to truly understand how to organize civil society in China? Can China create its own social entrepreneurs within its borders? I’ll try to find my answer when I go to Sichuan tomorrow, deep inside the country’s interior.
Written by Lin Yang · Filed Under All Blogs
Lin Yang is currently a second year MPP candidate at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Prior to Harvard, he spent six months at Tsinghua University in Beijing, conducting research on China's shortage of water resources. He also taught high school mathematics for two years in the Mississippi Delta as part of Teach for America.
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